Category Archives: Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)

Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia CA, Benicia City Council Member Kari Birdseye, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Valero Benicia Refinery, Vice-Mayor Terry Scott

Moving Forward to Improve Benicia’s Industrial Safety and Health – An Open Letter to Benicia

Valero’s Benicia Refinery.  | Pat Toth-Smith.

On Sept 5, Benicia’s City Council unanimously initiated the first step of a process to assess the need to graduate the current Memo of Understanding (MOU) with Valero Benicia Refinery to an ordinance.

This step, which asks staff review the MOU, underscores the importance of transition from an MOU to an ordinance that would provide additional local oversight to help ensure appropriate measures are in place to protect the health and safety of our community.

Timing of the request corresponds with early planning for the sunset of the current Valero MOU set to terminate in June 2025.

Vice Mayor Terry Scott and Council Member Kari Birdseye, the two councilmembers who introduced the issue, clearly believe the primary responsibility of our City Council and City Government is to safeguard the health, safety and well-being of our residents, businesses, and visitors.

It is also Council’s responsibility to ensure that industries, which operate within our jurisdiction, employ the best available technology to detect emissions and discharges and best practices. Community notifications of emergencies or failures to meet state and federal regulations are a priority as well.

This responsibility extends beyond traditional roles like policing, firefighting, safe water, and wastewater treatment. It encompasses ensuring the quality of the air we breathe.

The two-step request posed the question: Does the City of Benicia possess the most efficient and effective tools to regulate, monitor, and enforce air and toxic safety standards that impact our community? This includes real-time emission measurement, performance monitoring, transparency, air quality management and stronger communications.

Our defined ask in the two-step process is for staff to analyze current MOU’s performance metrics and evaluate whether additional regulation is needed. Additionally, we request that an analysis of key learnings of our current working communications, monitoring and cooperation agreement with Valero be included in this process.

It is our belief that the time has come to explore the best practices to manage air quality and emissions, amplify transparency and real-time communication, establish cutting-edge monitoring measures, prioritize public health, encourage environmental stewardship, cultivate community trust, and elevate measurement and trust standards.

Simply put, we can only manage what we monitor. We must adequately monitor our air quality near the refinery and throughout our community.

We look forward to working with city staff, community groups, businesses, and concerned citizens to create a model of local air and health regulations that better protects Benicia.

In Service,

Vice Mayor Scott and City Council Member Birdseye

There is a group of concerned citizens of Benicia who also support the adoption of a Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (BISHO). To learn more about the effort and add your support, visit www.bisho.org.

Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia CA, Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO), Keeping Watch on Earth News, Valero Benicia Refinery

Do you support a safe and healthy Benicia? Sign up to learn more!

Valero’s Benicia Refinery.  | Pat Toth-Smith.

From Benicia’s ISHO Working Group
September 2023:

This is your invitation to fight for the safety and health of all Benicians. Sign up to learn more about adopting an Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance (ISHO) here in Benicia by filling out the form here: https://forms.gle/GAScUE4WtfrSwDSS8.

Did you know that from at least 2003 through 2022 Valero emitted cancer-causing benzene and other toxic gasses into Benicia’s air, typically hundreds of times higher than levels permitted by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, without informing the City or its citizens? This is just one of many documented, serious offenses and violations Valero has committed – including additional extensive, ongoing, decade-long violations we learned of just this month!

Did you know that the Valero facility is the only refinery in the Bay Area that is not governed by an industrial safety ordinance (ISO), a law that can protect a community’s health and safety?

Do you think we’ve waited long enough for Benicia to adopt an Industrial Safety & Health Ordinance (ISHO)?

A group of Benicians is working on these issues and is proposing legislation to strengthen local laws regarding health and safety. This group, the ISHO Working Group, supports the adoption of an ISHO by the City of Benicia with the aim of significantly improving health, safety, public notification, prevention of and response to future incidents.

On Tuesday, September 5,  Benicia City Council unanimously approved of the “first step” in the process to consider adopting an ISHO.  This first step essentially sets the matter on the agenda, and it is anticipated that the “second step” will occur sometime in December 2023, when staff recommends the next steps to be taken for adopting a future ordinance.

This is the second time we have had a second step for an Industrial Safety Ordinance, but Benicia City Council voted against it with a 3-2 vote in 2018.

Let’s not let that happen again!

If you watched the City Council meeting last Tuesday, you saw ISHO opponents already lobbying against the adoption of an ISHO.  We anticipate that it will require a very strong effort on the part of the ISHO Working Group to get this over the finish line and we will need your support to get it done.

If you would like to learn more about the issues and our efforts to adopt an ISHO, just click the following link and fill out the form: https://forms.gle/GAScUE4WtfrSwDSS8. After that, you will receive regular notices and information about the program and how you can help.

Please share this invitation and link with friends and post it on social media, and please keep up the good work in recruiting more supporters.  It will soon be time for us to speak truth to power and we need all of the support we can get!

Together, we can make a real difference for the safety and health of all Benicians.

Air Monitoring, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia Community Air Monitoring Program (BCAMP), Valero Benicia Refinery

Benicia mayor says Valero’s latest alleged emissions violations ‘should bother all Benicia residents’

Valero Benicia Refinery. | Scott Morris / Vallejo Sun.

Vallejo Sun, by Scott Morris, August 10, 2023

BENICIA – The Bay Area Air Quality Management District announced Thursday that it had discovered continued violations at the Valero Benicia refinery during its investigation into years of toxic releases.

Specifically, the air district said that Valero had failed to install required pollution control equipment on eight pressure relief devices,  safety devices that prevent extreme over pressurization that could cause a catastrophic equipment failure. The violations led to 165 tons of illegal emissions, the air district said. [Emph. added by BenIndy contributor.]

The air district said it is seeking an abatement order from its independent hearing board that would require Valero to immediately correct the violations.

“The extensive violations discovered at Valero’s Benicia refinery are of great concern,” air district chief counsel Alexander Crockett said in a statement. “Our priority is to protect the health and well-being of our communities, and we will vigorously pursue enforcement measures to achieve cleaner and safer air for all residents of the Bay Area.”

A Valero spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Benicia Mayor Steve Young said in a statement that Valero’s alleged continued pattern of emissions violations is “particularly concerning” and “should bother all Benicia residents.”

“The City is also waiting, with increasing impatience, to see how the separate, bigger, case of 16 years of unreported hydrogen emissions will be ultimately resolved,” Young said. “The citizens of Benicia deserve much more transparency from the refinery about these operational deficiencies than we have been receiving.”

The air district discovered the violations during its investigation into the release of toxic emissions from a hydrogen vent at the refinery that went on for nearly 20 years. The air district separately obtained an abatement order for those violations last year, though by the time it revealed the excess emissions publicly, it had already worked with Valero to correct them for some time.

Those excess emissions were first detected by Valero in 2003 when it started measuring output from the hydrogen vent, but the air district believes it likely had been going on even earlier and has no measurements from that time.

Since 2003, the air district estimates that the vent was releasing about 4,000 pounds of hydrocarbons per day, far more than state regulations allow. Overall, the district found that Valero released more than 10,000 tons of excess hydrocarbons over 16 years, including 138 tons of toxic air contaminants ethylbenzene, tolyrene, zolerine and the especially carcinogenic benzene.

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Read more! As Air Quality is so essential to our health, you might want to check out these resources:
Air Monitoring, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia Community Air Monitoring Program (BCAMP), Valero Benicia Refinery

BREAKING – Air District seeks abatement order for extensive air quality violations at Valero

[Note from BenIndy Contributor Nathalie Christian: Please note that this BAAQMD news release regards separate and new violations distinct from the 16 years of undisclosed, unchecked emissions at the Valero-operated refinery that were first reported in early 2022. According to this release, Valero has also failed to measure and report widespread hydrogen emissions violations at the Benicia Refinery – for up to a decade. The risk to our community is presently unknown. What is known is that our ‘good neighbor’ Valero is failing our community and will continue to do so unless oversight and remediation mechanisms improve. After yet another decades-long series of violations, a pattern of alleged dangerous incompetence at best, and lawless disregard for our community and environment at worst is clearer than ever. Benicia deserves better, and you can help. The Air District will hold a hearing to consider issuing the abatement order, where the public can participate and demand action. I will post the notice for that hearing when it is scheduled, and you can sign up for Hearing Board updates at https://www.baaqmd.gov/contact-us/sign-up-for-information. The bolded elements below reflect my added emphasis.]

Requested abatement order would require the refinery to install pollution control equipment

Valero’s Benicia Refinery.  Pat Toth-Smith.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 10, 2023
CONTACT: communications@baaqmd.gov

SAN FRANCISCO – The Bay Area Air Quality Management District announced today that it is seeking an abatement order from the agency’s independent Hearing Board to require Valero Refining Co. to cease ongoing violations of Air District regulations at its Benicia refinery.

The Air District is seeking an abatement order to require Valero to install pollution control equipment on eight pressure relief devices, or PRDs, installed on the refinery’s hydrogen compressor unit. PRDs are safety devices used to prevent extreme overpressures that could cause catastrophic equipment failure – not unlike the pressure relief valve on a home pressure cooker, but on an industrial scale.

Air District regulations require pollution control equipment to be installed on PRDs that experience two or more releases within five years. Valero’s PRDs have been subject to these requirements for years, and in some cases for over a decade, but Valero has failed to install the required pollution control equipment.

“The extensive violations discovered at Valero’s Benicia refinery are of great concern and the Air District is seeking an abatement order to ensure that Valero takes action to prevent harmful emissions from impacting the communities surrounding the refinery,” said Alexander Crockett, the Air District’s chief counsel. “Our priority is to protect the health and well-being of our communities, and we will vigorously pursue enforcement measures to achieve cleaner and safer air for all residents of the Bay Area.”

PRDs release emissions during upset conditions and not on a day-to-day basis. However, when PRDs releases do occur, the emissions go directly to the atmosphere unless they are captured and/or abated. The Air District is seeking this abatement order to require abatement equipment to prevent emissions from going into the atmosphere if and when any PRDs do experience releases.

Air District staff discovered these PRD violations in connection with an investigation into a series of widespread violations involving Valero’s hydrogen system, including extensive emissions from a hydrogen vent for which the Hearing Board issued an abatement order in 2022. Valero is required to report releases from its hydrogen system PRDs to the Air District, but it failed to do so for over ten years. As a result, these ongoing violations did not come to light until the Air District conducted further investigations after it found the hydrogen vent violations.

The Air District’s Hearing Board is an independent tribunal created by state law with the power to order violators to cease operating until they come into compliance with Air District regulations. Hearing Board proceedings are open to the public, and the public is encouraged to participate and comment when the Hearing Board holds a hearing to consider issuing the requested abatement order. Once the hearing is scheduled, a link will be posted on the Air District’s website at www.baaqmd.gov. The public can also sign up for Hearing Board updates at https://www.baaqmd.gov/contact-us/sign-up-for-information.

The Hearing Board is not empowered to impose monetary penalties for violations of Air District regulations. The Air District will take separate enforcement action to assess penalties for these violations to the maximum extent provided for by law. The purpose of this abatement order request is to seek an order requiring Valero to cease its ongoing violations with respect to these PRDs and immediately come into compliance.

Read more! As Air Quality is so essential to our health, you might want to check out these resources: